Issue #75
April 24, 2008

Welcome to Inside Freelance Design (IFD), your free, bi-weekly e-letter from American Writers & Artists Inc. Every other week, you can receive this special alert with secrets, tips, and insights from AWAI's graphic design pros to help you improve your skills and reach your goal of becoming a professional graphic designer in the fastest time possible.

IN THIS ISSUE:
  • A Secret Way to Find Hordes of New Clients
  • Quick Tip: Extracting Images From PDF Documents
  • Font Tips: Finding a Replacement for Times New Roman
  • EXTRA! EXTRA! News and Job Opportunities
A Secret Way to Find Hordes of New Design Customers Through eBay!
By Doug Farrick

Many designers think of eBay only as a way to buy and sell stuff. But it can be a powerful lead-generation machine for your design business as well. How? Read on.

Why use eBay? Because eBay is absolutely huge. It has over 200,000,000 registered users, with 40,000 new registrations every day. And, on average, it processes more searches per day than Google.

You can take advantage of this astonishing power to build your design business quickly! A key to doing it is to understand the difference between Google searches and eBay searches: eBay is all about BUYERS and not general information seekers.

How does this apply to your marketing/graphic design niche? Many prospective clients use eBay to find services. These services include many you currently offer (or can easily add): logo design, business card design, brochure design, and so on. So your eBay presence would tie-in with this need.

You start by offering some type of graphics-related product. (I’ll explain in a moment.) You can then sell your design services to the customers you attract.

How do you tap into this network of buyers? Offer a low-cost, attention-getting informational report as a PDF file. Charging from $.99 to $5.99 seems about right. The low price grabs the prospect and pulls him in. Then, in the report itself, you include a pitch for your services ... with a discount for first-time clients.

A few ideas for report subjects: “The 7 Deadliest Sins to Avoid When Designing Your Logo,” “10 Radical Time-Saving Photoshop Tips,” or “6 Questions You Must Ask Before You Hire a Graphic Designer.”

Of course, if, in addition to design services, you sell items like T-shirts or prints ... use those to attract potential clients. The customers you attract with either an informational report or a physical product will be high quality leads for your services.

Once a customer has bought from you, you must nurture the relationship outside of eBay. By delivering what you promise – promptly and professionally – you convert them from being an eBay customer into being your client.

An important consideration: Do you have a system in place to handle new leads? Once you deliver the product they ordered ... what will your next contact with them be? Will it be a postcard, a phone call, or a personal letter? Can you sign them up for your e-newsletter? Put them into your hopper and communicate with them regularly (At least once per month.)

Does this eBay marketing strategy work? You bet it does. The first time I used it, I posted a free report I’d written. I had over 20 quick inquiries ... and landed three design jobs (one that turned into a long-term client). And, so far, I have only scratched its surface.

The eBay-marketing strategy is a very successful, and not too difficult, one to add to your current bag of self-marketing tricks. But it’s not intended to replace your other efforts to find new clients. Use it in addition to what you’re already doing, and you’ll build your design business – and your success – faster than you thought possible.

[Ed note: Doug Farrick has over 20 years of experience in the design business, the last five owning a successful design firm. Since selling it in 2007, he founded TheDesignersInnerCircle.com – a resource center for graphic designers. Subscribe to his “Designers Inner Circle - Tip of the Week” at: http://www.thedesignersinnercirclereport.com/

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Quick Tip: Extracting Images From PDF Files
By Kristin Schwarz

The more you familiarize yourself with Adobe Acrobat (full-featured, not Acrobat Reader), the more of its power you can harness. One tool you’ll want to master is Acrobat’s ability to export raster images embedded in PDF documents to individual graphic files.

This is very convenient if, for example, a client wants you to use images from an earlier promotion, but does not have the original image files. (It happens… more often than you might expect!)

Acrobat Screen Shot

Here’s how to do it:

  1. From the menu at the top, choose Advanced > Document Processing > Export All Images.
  2. In the Export All Images As dialog box, choose a file format for the images. By default, exported image files use the source file name.
  3. Click Settings.
  4. In the Export All Images As Settings dialog box, select the file settings, color management, and conversion settings for the file type.
  5. For Exclude Images Smaller Than, select the smallest size of image to be extracted. Select No Limit to extract all images.
  6. Click OK. In the Export All Images As dialog box, click Save or OK.

Note: As indicated above, you can export raster images (scanned images, digital photos, JPGs, GIFs, TIFFs, etc.) but not vector objects (e.g., Illustrator and CorelDraw images).

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How to Avoid Expensive Graphic Design Software Mistakes

You already know:

  • You need it to produce top quality, top paying work.
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But do you know the 8 questions you should ask BEFORE you buy?

Find out: http://www.thedesignerslife.com/buyingsoftware/

Font Tip: A Versatile Serif Font to Replace Times
By Kristin Schwarz

DM designers know this cardinal rule: Use a serif font for the body copy.

But a question I often get from our members is “What serif font other than Times New Roman can you recommend?” The answer: “It depends on the product your are designing for and the target audience. You would not want to use a font that has very round and soft letters when designing a high-tech or science promo, for example.

There are literally thousands of serif, sans serif, and script fonts. Finding the right one can seem like a daunting task. Since the new format of Inside Freelance Design gives us the ability to “show” rather than “tell,” I will now be able to show you my font suggestions.

Janson Text

So let’s start this new series on fonts with a very versatile one: Janson Text.

I like this font’s clean lines. The serif strokes on the letters are precise and not overly ornate. This means it can be used for almost any kind of promotion. You will notice that Janson Text is very similar to Times New Roman.

Times New Roman

You will notice some differences in the italic version of these two fonts. It might not seem obvious in the example above, but my experience has shown that Janson Text prints is crisper and slightly thinner than Times New Roman, making it very readable.

EXTRA! EXTRA! News and Job Opportunities
  • Creative Graphic Designer Needed in Philadelphia: S. Walter Packaging in Philadelphia seeks a creative and talented graphic designer who will thrive in a fast-paced environment. You should have knowledge of the production process and at least two years of experience. You must also know and love the Adobe Creative Suite. Send your resume and salary requirements to artdirector-1@swalter.com.
  • Entry-Level Graphic Design Position in New Jersey: The Creative Group needs to place a graphic designer with one year of experience with an agency in East Hanover. You will assist the art department with the design of a variety of materials, mostly for pharmaceutical clients. Send your information to paramus@creativegroup.com
  • High-Energy Designer for Fast-Paced Position: Iwanta Classifieds needs a skilled, detail-oriented designer willing to meet hard deadlines. You’ll create ads, take photographs, and lay out marketing promotions. You need to know Quark, Illustrator, Photoshop, Acrobat, and MS Office. Strong proofreading skills won’t hurt. Send your resume, work samples, and salary history to bethh@iwanta.net.
COMING NEXT ISSUE:
  • So You Worry That Companies With an In-House Designer Won’t Hire You? Don’t!
  • Quick Tip: Password-Protect Your PDF Document
* ABOUT INSIDE FREELANCE DESIGN *

Inside Freelance Design is a FREE bi-weekly newsletter from American Writers & Artists Inc., available to AWAI members and friends.

© 2008 American Writers & Artists Inc.

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